Green politicians less likely to be promoted in China

Chinese politicians who try to tackle pollution are less likely to be promoted, a new report has found, offering one explanation for the country's blighted environment.

The clamour from the CHINESE public at being surrounded by foul air, water and soil has become deafening.

But for ambitious Communist party officials, it pays to focus on economic growth rather than environmental concerns, five economists from China, Singapore and Canada found.

"A city government's spending on environmental improvements is actually significantly negatively related to the odds of its (Communist party) secretary and mayor being promoted," wrote Professors Wu Jing, Deng Yongheng, Huang Jun, Randall Morck and Bernard Yeung.

They found that for every additional 0.36 percentage points of local GDP spent on the environment, a party secretary's chances of promotion would drop by 8.5 percentage points.

The economists suggested that officials who nitpicked over pollution ran the risk of offending their predecessors who created the mess.